Aug13

Thursday Thunks

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1. Hypothetical question- you are in a building with famous works of art, old manuscripts of famous novels, and original sheet music from famous composers. The building is on fire and looks to be completely destroyed. Do you grab any of the famous works before fleeing, and if so what?
Yes I would! If I was in the Brandywine River Museum, which is 10 minutes from here, I’d grab Jamie Wyeth’s pig or something of his late father’s-not sure which.
2. In August 1969, the Manson family went on a 2 night killing spree. Do you think 40 years later they have paid for their crimes?
No, they should stay in prison, especially Wacky Charlie.
3. Power Outage! What’s the longest you have been without power?
3 or 4 very looonggg days. I contracted Lyme Disease too.
4. Just bought a new tazer gun. Will you let it be tested it on you to see if it works, and how it feels to be tazered?
I think I would be afraid or wonder if it would hurt my heart or something.
5. A neighbor’s mail was delivered to you. In it is a magazine not wrapped in plastic. Is it ok for you to flip through it before giving it to the neighbor? Do you tell them you looked through it?
If it was something I was interested in, maybe I’d flip through it. I use to get magazines where a week or so of them were missing, so I’m thinking someone just kept them. I wouldn’t tell them I looked, because maybe they looked at mine too!
6. If I went through your purse/wallet right now, what all would I find in there?
Stuff! : ) I actually got one of those purses that looks like a mini backpack and it’s fairly organized. The usual-wallet, lip gloss, cloth to clean glasses, MP3 player, peppermints and gum….
7. Have you been living under a rock?
Oh-you saw the moss on my back?
8. Tell us something crazy you did this week.
Getting stuck in a traffic jam going to the Jersey shore-10 miles-1.5 hours! Got up to where we were to go to one lane and they weren’t even fixing the road-that was crazy. I had a melt down in the middle of the night in Atlantic City as my knees were achy and I couldn’t sleep.

Aug13

Back home again

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We had a few ‘interesting’ days away-10 mile back-up Monday for ‘nothing’ except a part of the Garden State Expressway had one line and one truck blocking a lane. It took 1.5 hours to go 10 miles-the worst traffic jam ever.

But we got to see sights like this:

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The Atlantic City Convention center where the Miss America pageant use to be held and this today:
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A pod of dolphins at the Cape May Point beach in New Jersey-about 10 or so were following the boat.
Somewhat closer up and circled-

dolphins

More later!

Aug9

1st Sunflower Autumn Harvest

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1st Sunflower Autumn Harvest, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

It poured rain this morning and left the atmosphere very steamy-like a sauna. I was happy to see this cheerful sunflower, which I think is Autumn Harvest because of the color variations in the middle. The deer got to a few of these, but luckily I had some behind a fence in the garden. In this above ‘open’ garden, the groundhog or deer ate Cosmos and Marigolds. A few days ago, I planted more zinnia seeds as it looks a bit weedy and sad here.
Our once lovely tomatoes seem to be dying off and the fruit is getting bad. Too much of a good thing with all the rain. We have gotten a nice crop of cukes so far (about 10 which isn’t bad for us) and zucchini along with grape and cherry tomatoes. The end of this week we’ll be digging around the potatoes to see if we got any of those. We also got about a pound of green beans, so there may be more of those too!

Aug8

Photo Hunt-Low

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Cosmo undercover, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

Better late than never-we had slow or no internet all day-I had to call Com*cast and the man told me to take off some Com*cast program and it started to work again!

Cosmo kitty couldn’t get any lower than this-under to sofa. He use to do this mostly in the wintertime. I don’t think he can fit under there anymore. Brian took this photo.

Aug8

Post 2,500!!!

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5thanblog
This is almost my 5th blog anniversary. I started at the end of 2004 when Sean was a high school senior, now he is a college graduate. My post back in 2004 was about Atlantic City as it was around this same time last year. Guess what?-we are headed down there and Cape May (hoping) for a few jam-filled days next week. My first vacation of the year! I don’t count going to State College a vacation, but I did see some awesome scenery and of course the college campus.
I was in Pier*One and bought a few things for my ‘5th Anniversary Giveaway’. I plan to add a few things from the New Jersey shore to the booty. And I’m not telling you what the goodies are, you’ll have to trust me they are cute, yummy or fun-lol
Please comment on just this post if you want to try and win my goodie bag-the goodie bag is a lovely real bag from Pier*One-I’ll tell you that!
Thanks to all my faithful followers who I have met over the years. I hope we continue to keep in touch and perhaps even met each other someday! And I enjoy making new friends too, so welcome if you are just peeking. ; )
My other milestones-almost 7 thousand uploads to Flickr! and now over 500 uploads of my art cards and collages-about 2.5 yrs of creating!

Oh and the drawing will be randomly generated and the winner picked on August 31st to give many people a chance to enter.

Aug7

Show & Tell -Birthday handmade cards for a friend

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These are mostly the size of playing cards!

OMG thank you one and all, originally uploaded by nayski.

For a Birthday Girl!
It was a big secret over at Flickr. Our artsy pal Renee was turning 50 at the end of July and her pal Sue asked many of us to make a card for her. No problem–as you can see! I did the Barbie one in the middle near the right since Barbie Millicent Roberts also turned 50 this year! What a great array of talent!!

Aug6

Thursday Thunks

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1. What the hell were you thinking?
I know, I totally skipped these questions last week because they were so strange-lol

2. The tornado sirens go off in your neighborhood – what do you do?
Get everyone down the basement.

3. Give us a recipe.
Since we are growing cucumbers-a Martha Stewart one-
Cucumber Ranch Dressing
Ingredients

Makes 2 1/4 cups

* 1 medium cucumber, peeled, halved lengthwise, seeded, and grated on the large holes of a box grater
* 1 tablespoon shallot, finely chopped
* 3/4 cup sour cream
* 1/4 cup low-fat buttermilk
* 1/4 cup mayonnaise
* 3 1/2 tablespoons (about 1 lemon) fresh lemon juice
* 1 1/4 teaspoons coarse salt
* Pinch of cayenne pepper
* 3 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
* 3 tablespoons fresh chives, finely chopped
Directions
1. Stir together cucumber, shallot, sour cream, buttermilk, mayonnaise, lemon juice, salt, cayenne, parsley, and chives in a medium bowl. Season with additional salt and cayenne, if desired. Dressing can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 3 days.
Serve with pita chips-yum!
4. It’s the middle of the night, there isnt a car in sight and you are stuck at a red light that just won’t change…. how long do you wait until you run it?
Within a few minutes.

5. When was the last time you got all dressed up fancy-like? Where did you go? For my son’s college graduation in May and then I wore a new dress to a little grad party we had last month for him.

6. Have you ever had a mole removed? Yes, it was right where necklaces would rub on it.

7. Are you in an area of record highs or record lows for the temps this summer? Are you lucky and stuck in the middle where it’s somewhat normal? We’ve had a fairly ‘cool’ summer. In this past week we’ve had high 80s and humidity. It’s really playing with my sinuses.

8. When was the last time you changed your furnace filter?
I just asked my husband as we run the a/c through it too. It’s been a few months. I asked before reading this too!

9. What’s your favorite type of frog?
The ones I see in my little pond-Leopards.

10. If you were to go on America’s Got Talent, what would you do for your talent? (and choosing not to go is not an option….)
Sing!

11. Have you ever been on a rooftop of a building? Yes! Down at Caesar’s in Atlantic City (where we are going again next week) they have a pool there.

12. What is the first website you go to each day when you sit down at your computer, other than your email?
Either my blog or Facebook.
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My sinuses are being bothersome-the ones around my eyes-ugh. My throat is weird too. Even Claritin isn’t helping a lot. I have something else to try too.
I got a phone call yesterday from ‘Private caller’. At first I thought it was a charity, and then I picked it up and it was my friend from college who was also my maid of honor. We had lost touch because she wouldn’t write anything about what was going on in her life in Christmas cards, just wrote ‘Love, L’. I asked her to and she wouldn’t. Anyway, we talked for an hour. She got her Master’s at age 45 and still is working in the prison in NJ (I think she processes inmates). Said they are hiring people that haven’t had college training as they don’t want to pay for that. She’s hoping to retire in 7 yrs at age 55. Found her through her brother on Facebook! She’s not a computer person.
Sean is off to Bethany Beach, DE to spend a few days with his pal who will be going to Miami for his Masters in a week or so. We are going down to Atlantic City for a few days next week like we did last year. We are hoping to drive over to Cape May as we haven’t been there for 10 yrs! Last year we went to Margate and saw the Lucy the Elephant structure.

Aug3

Need a baseball bat?

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All the rain kept us out of the garden for a number of days and lookie what Brian found over the weekend:
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Yep, a biggie! We also harvested about 4 cucumbers so far. Next week we’ll be digging to see if I got any fingerling potatoes! I see some green beans that need picking too.
Unfortunately, many of the tomatoes in my container garden and a few in the big garden are getting blossom rot from the rain. We need some hot, dry days to hopefully remedy that! Tomorrow and the next should help.
For the second Sunday in a row, we had a terrible storm that knocked out the power for 5 hours each day it happened. I tidied up some art supplies and made this as one of the four I made that day. It’s my friend’s grandmom-I don’t think she reads my blog and she’s away right now:
IMG_5866
Don’t put an old photo of yourself or a relative on your blog or in Facebook or I may use it! I’ll gift her with this. I’d say it’s about 1908 or so.
Sean and I went down to my mom’s and did a few things around the place. She bought yet another bagless vacuum which I scolded her for. I hope this one doesn’t ‘blow up’ like her previous clunker did! We went down to the liquidator store and JoAnn’s and I bought a few things namely paper crafting things at JoAnn’s (40% off) and 70% off windchimes and a few little gnome figurines. We went to The O*live Garden and the portions were very slimmed down. I always had some left to bring home, not tonight.
So that’s my last few days. Plan to stay in and cool tomorrow!

Aug1

Photo Hunt-Entertainment

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Besides my favorite singer James Taylor entertaining me 4 times over the last 30 yrs, I find it entertaining to take photos off our fairly new HD-tv. I then make collages, etc. if I have enough like I had here. My next tv photo session may be to look at old videos and freeze frame them to take photos. I had tried that on the old tv-like looked awful.
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Happy Lammas Day! It’s the first day of harvest! It was traditional to bake a loaf of bread and have it consecrated at church, thus ‘loaf mass’-Lammas! Thanks Farmer’s Almanac!